Week 67: 23rd – 29th December
After last week’s exploration into artistic forms of research mixed with concepts of quantum physics and philosophy, I thought it might be time to consider again the nature of interdisciplinary practice, particularly in relation to the PhD and academia in general.
Interdisciplinarity and the Practice-led PhD
Interdisciplinarity is defined as a process of integration ‘by which ideas, data and information, methods, tools, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines are synthesized, connected or blended.’ However, before considering the nature of interdisciplinarity in practical terms, it is necessary to recognise the time required to develop a clear understanding of even a single discipline, which is one of the fundamental elements of achieving doctoral status (discussed in week 19).
This, unfortunately, runs counter to artistic practice which may, by its nature, stray into other disciplines. When producing a PhD in Fine Art, in addition to investigating a particular question (and the disciplines within which it falls), you are also expected to contextualise your work within contemporary art practice, as well as art (and cultural) history. Such a wide scope of research, particularly within the timescale of a postgraduate degree, is viewed by some scholars as “risky” as it potentially doesn’t allow time to gain a complete understanding of all the related fields.
Benefits and challenges
This necessity to draw from and connect disparate disciplines has led some scholars to believe that this can result in reduced standards in the quality of research, a view that it has been suggested is upheld by the submission process of the Research Excellence Framework. However, others believe that interdisciplinary practice challenges traditional disciplines by creating new forms of cultural knowledge.
In Ten Cheers for Interdisciplinarity: The Case for Interdisciplinarity Knowledge and Research, Moti Nissani discusses the need for increasing interdisciplinary research in tackling creative and real world challenges. His points include: the necessity of a “clashing” of disparate ideas to develop new creative solutions; the ability of people who are familiar with two or more disciplines to spot errors that may not be perceptible to strict disciplinarians; and the understanding that the knowledge that people create doesn’t always adhere to the boundaries of academic disciplines.
Practice vs theory
Even in the case of theoretical interdisciplinary subjects such as Cultural Studies, the field is widened by its nature, in that it ‘represents the field of culture itself and the field of methodologies for interpreting that culture’. Each project is defined by locating a cultural phenomenon or object of study and then reading it. However, in the case of the practice-led approach, the object of study is simultaneously created alongside its interpretation, further problematising this process.
However, it appears that despite these discrepancies, both sides of the argument for and against interdisciplinarity, appear to reach a similar conclusion. Hal Foster sums this up in his interview in ‘The Anxiety of Interdisciplinarity’, where he declares “The status of interdisciplinary has changed over the last decade. Although I remain committed to it in principle there are clearly problems… Today so much work that purports to be interdisciplinary seems to be non-disciplinary to me. To be interdisciplinary you need to be disciplinary first – to be grounded in one discipline, preferably two, to know the historicity of these discourses before you test them against each other… Art needs structure, it needs constraint – enough resistance to articulate complicated thoughts and feelings”.
Further reading:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/10/01/rafols-interdisciplinary-research-ref/
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/feb/19/interdisciplinary-research-universities-academic-careers
https://www.academia.edu/1491885/The_Future_of_Interdisciplinary_Studies_in_the_Humanities
http://www.alan-shapiro.com/inter-disciplinary-or-trans-disciplinary-by-nolan-bazinet
Simon O’Sullivan, Cultural Studies as Rhizome – Rhizome as Cultural Studies in Cultural Studies, Interdisciplinarity and Translation
